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Orestes

2007-2008 National Theatre of Northern Greece

Orestes - Euripides

Repeat: Vassiliko Theatre, 25/09/2008

Launch: Theatro Dassous, 09/07/2008

'In focusing on an alleged 'moral , scholars have tended to discount the role of the exodus in the emotional melodramatic structure of 'Orestes'. But in fact the exodus fittingly concludes this exceedingly agitated and innovative play, providing an appropriate climax to Orestes' growing frustration and outrage, while building to a similar crisis the sense of a world that has gone disastrously and irrevocably awry. Betrayed on all sides, his expectations repeatedly frustrated by a world where the old rules no longer seem to apply, Orestes threatens the destruction of his ancestral palace and, with it, the entire mythical tradition associated with the house of Atreus. This most unorthodox of plays finds a fitting finale in the sheer bravoura of the scene, whose intensity presents a suitable emotional climax. To a large degree the anger and frustration of Euripides' protagonist his bitter alienation from a society corrupted by self interest and political factionalism must have spoken directly to the poet's contemporaries. Apollo, it is true, appears at the end to set things right, but the audience departs from 'Orestes' with the sense, not of a final reconciliation, but of a resentful and angry grievance against a world in chaos.' John R. Porter